


liberation

by Eloquentdrivil



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Allusions to past institutional abuse, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama, F/F, Lowkey Romeo and Juliet vibes but without the implication of death, Secret Kalex Santa, wolf-shifter!Alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21871780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloquentdrivil/pseuds/Eloquentdrivil
Summary: But she controls herself.God forbid she embarrass herself in front of a pretty girl, even if that girlisfrom the other side of the mountain, and even if that girldoesthink she's an animal; she still has her pride, after all.When Alex finishes, the woman smiles so beautifully wide, Alex's chest heaves just a little breathless with it.'Oh, strike pretty; she is beautiful.'- - -Alex's parents took her to Cadmus out of desperation; Kara was there because she was Kryptonian.After the mountain facility is liberated and the territory divided between the Cadmus survivors, Kara and Alex wound up on different sides of the mountain.Not that they're gonna let a mountain and the threat of some dumb war get in the way.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 107
Collections: Secret Kalex Santa 2019





	liberation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MageWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MageWriter/gifts).



> MageWriter's Secret Santa Prompt:
> 
> "wereperson AU where Kara loves that her human can become a large fluffy animal (wolf, large cat, a bear, something large and furry that Kara can cuddle), would really like her first response to seeing the change be something like 'Puppy!', and Alex being annoyed because she is a fierce, deadly killing machine not a cuddly pet."

\- - -

Sometimes Alex's thoughts slip far enough away from simply being relieved to be free from her captors to wonder why any of them call it a "liberation" when Cadmus employees really just...stopped coming to work once Luthor's accounts froze and he stopped paying them?

Is it just not satisfying to acknowledge that the things they suffered really had just been the will of one man and carried out by people just gathering a paycheck?

Did they really go through all of that for a paycheck?

If she ever dared address this, Alex thinks her mom would say that's not why  _ Alex  _ was there; she wasn't just a paycheck to her parents, that her parents made the choices they did to save her life, and all three of them found themselves differently enslaved as a result.

(She'd say she was just grateful Alex had lived to see her twelfth birthday, let alone found the other side of nineteen, too.)

But Sam has a family out there who won't ever know what happened to her, even if she claims it doesn't matter because they'd kicked her out anyway. (Alex doesn't ever mention the way Sam's eyes sometimes drift away at this, like she still wonders  _ what if  _ they'd been able to regret it and come looking for her; there are no happy answers on the other side of that question.)

And J'onn, though one of the few aliens on their side of the mountain, had still made a peaceful existence in the South American town that had taken to calling him one of their own, and Cadmus had taken that from him, had taken him from them, and then kept him long enough to let time steal that home from him too.

(There's someone else's story aching inside her, but Alex can't tell if it really belongs to someone else, or it's a fractured part of her own, if it's real or pasted together from others, if it's maybe all of that simultaneously somehow...)

Does the method of arrival change the outcome? Does the nobility of Alex's parents' reasons for bringing her here invalidate the things she endured once her label had changed to from patient to 'lycanthropy subject 237'? The tests and training and experiments. Every moment of her life since set-up to walk a line of perfect indecision between studying Alex's successful recoding to implement the technique on soldiers, and using Alex's successful recoding to train her into the incidental soldier they got in the process; the uncertainty of her own sustained use bringing with it it's own kind of trauma she can't talk about with her parents.

(Sam jokes that it might be worth telling them, just to see the look on their faces when Alex says she and Sam met when they were paired for a disastrously ill-conceived mating program. 

_ "Just imagine Jeremiah's face when you tell him Dr. Maniacal-Egoism must have actually written out a procedure with the words 'psychedelic mood-lighting, wine-coolers, and cheese-squares,'"  _ Sam says, bumping her shoulder to Alex's as they trot the trail down to the creek.

Alex howls her laughing protest against  _ ever  _ telling her father such a thing, and they both silently decide to define their life together  _ now _ based on that one funny little anecdote, instead of the drug-induced combat sessions that preceded it, ignoring how familiar the sight of each other's blood had once been, stained across their own hands, matted in fur, dripping from their teeth.

They both ignore when their opponents weren't each other. Were, instead, others. All hazing sensation—scent and touch and snarling teeth—but no longer familiar to them now, the way anyone still alive is familiar now.

Those nameless existences on a long list of people who didn't reemerge from the bureaucratic shuffle after the liberation.

The nameless people no one talks about, that no one really knew, but maybe knew of, or had talked to, or had shared a cell-wall with, and laid in bed every night for three years and tangled their fingers together through a broken air vent—

\- or fingers slipping into and feeling out freshly-grown fur with enough awe to fix some of the brokenness in a genetically changed body no one would ever ask for

\- or fingers with glowing green veins that always only brought choking sobs to an otherwise sunny optimist

\- or fingers that cradled palms to cheeks while each took turns whispering other-worldly poetry into delicate skin

\- or fingers tracing a symbol, over and over again, over and over again, over and over again, over and over

—all without ever sharing a common language to properly comfort each other, but had somehow found a shared love just the same.

And everyone just pretends these people never existed. Will tattoo those symbols into their skin less than two years later, then pretend they don't remember who'd first taught it to them, like all of this is just easier if they only remember the psychedelic mood-lighting because warm fingers and other-worldly poetry hadn't quite made it all the way home.)

And why does no one ever talk about what must have happened in the lower facility, either? The one their group of Mostly-Human-Most-Of-The-Time didn't even know existed until almost half a year after they'd been freed.

Sometimes Alex slips far enough away from relief to wonder just how bad the Mostly-Aliens-All-Of-The-Time had been treated to make their General Astra so  _ angry  _ upon the groups' first meeting. So sure the benefits of war would only ever outweigh the risks of peace.

Even now, the division of land and nearly two year silence doesn't ever feel like  _ peace  _ , because it's not, because Astra maintains that humans don't understand the word, and it just...makes Alex wonder. How much worse had they gotten it on that human-nonhuman divide?

What all had Cadmus done to them?

No buffer of "human enough" for most of the people subject to that side of the mountain. No common DNA curbing the worst of the scientists' impulses. No one to advocate for them as anything other than non-human entities, captured for further study. Modified—not to strengthen them—but to weaken them, to control them. 

And worse—

Was their trauma just a paycheck to their torturers, too?

\- - -

"We're not discussing this again," Jeremiah says firmly, boots heavy on the metal catwalk, clanging with every careless step.

The sound grates Alex's already frayed nerves, her wolf snarling at him to just  _ walk quieter _ .

Alex pulls a deep breath, then follows, her own bare feet making no sound, even in her haste to catch up. "It's not about peace talks this time. It's about their signal light. They don't have power—"

"Which is their issue to deal with, and not one they'd appreciate our help fixing." He doesn't turn back this time, apparently finding more merit in checking water gauges than the conversation at hand. 

She ignores him. "I think the rain caused a small landslide that might've just covered their main solar panel near the border—"

"It's North Central Washington; rain and landslides are going to happen. They're going to have to learn how to deal with it."

Alex's teeth grind this time and she slips ahead of him, forcing his attention back to her. "I don't think they even know that's what's causing it, is my point," she growls. "It's been days since we saw their light go out, and we don't know what their atmospheric needs are; for all we know some of them could've frozen to death by now."

Jeremiah tucks his clipboard against his chest, folding his arms across it and regards her expectantly. "And just what do you propose we do? How could we even get close enough to offer help? Their camp is at the other hive's entrance, on the polar opposite side of the mountain. You gonna yell until they come to the border to investigate? Or just blow past the agreement and walk straight into their camp, most definitely instigating a war in the process."

She wavers only for a moment, eyes dipping to the side with something like a prolonged shrug. "The panel is mostly visible from Tall-Tree. I was thinking I could just slip across—"

"No!" Jeremiah's eyes light with new vigor and he shoves past her. "Not only would you get yourself killed, you'd sign the death warrants of every person in this camp, and if you ever want to prove yourself responsible enough to take over it's leadership one day, you need to start seeing them as  _ your  _ responsibility, and let Astra's people be  _ Astra's  _ responsibility."

Her wolf howls at the thought and she struggles to maintain pace with his long, heavy strides. "But they could be dying!"

He stops and whirls back on her, skittering her feet up short. "Then they die. And it won't be your fault." He steps closer still, face set. "Astra made her bed. Now let her lay in it." He dismisses her and turns away.

She gapes after him, blood humming and hot. "And what about her peoples' choice? She just gets to damn them too?"

"Yes, Alexandra; that's the effect of an irresponsible leader," he calls back. "Consider her an example of what  _ not  _ to become when you find yourself in her shoes."

Alex is shaking by the time she finally convinces her feet to walk away, half a mind to demand what kind of leader  _ he _ is if he lets this happen.

\- - -

"You knew what he was gonna say," Sam reminds her later, portioning out their hand-delivered lunches across the table. "The woman held a knife to his kid's throat. He's not likely to just forget that and send you on a suicide mission."

Alex hasn't moved from her position leaning against the watch-tower railing, still eyeing the distinctive angle of solar sheeting beneath a thick coat of blackened muck and debris. "Call me optimistic," she mumbles. 

Her nose twitches at the roast beef waiting for her.

"I would  _ never  _ insult you like that," Sam says, drawing a smile to Alex's lips. "Besides, for all we know, the North is already on the case. It's been two years. I'm pretty sure they've figured out how solar panels work by now."

The auxiliary ones, sure. If the other side is anything like this one, those ones are located just a little ways up from their mountain-side entrance.

But Alex can say with confidence, not one person from the other side has come to do maintenance on the main panel in the year and a half since they'd been running sentry on this side, and there's not much the auxiliary can do long-term if the main panel fails entirely.

"Come on," Sam urges. "There's nothing you can do about it either way. Gotta let it go. At the end of the day, they're not our people."

_ 'They could be; that's the point!' _

Alex shakes off that ill-fated argument and lets out a breath, sending one last look to the damaged panel, before finally turning to her friend with a wan smile. "So. Tell me about your plan to woo the tech girl."

There's nothing she can do for those people, and it's not her responsibility to make up for another leader's hubris.

She just has to let it go.

\- - -

She can't just let it go.

She can't just risk a couple hundred lives over what amounts to some dumb 'I told you so' between faction leaders on whom so many people rely.

Alex grunts as she finally drags her body up and out of the defunct air-vent and tumbles out onto the hard-packed dirt below, nearly gouging herself on the military-duty saddle bag she'd shoved through first.

If she gets caught, she'll claim singular knowledge and responsibility, and plead for Astra to spare the rest of her camp; it's not like they won't be looking at a resource war if she  _ doesn't  _ do this and the other side gets desperate enough to lay siege.

She shimmies the saddlebag across her own shoulders and clips it around her chest and torso, then gives herself a hard shake as she transforms, her nano-tech suit retracting in time with her body's shifting form.

It is the right decision, of that she's certain.

One more shake to settle the heavy bag into place and Alex slips into the darkness, four paws to the familiar ground as she mentally maps the direction of the panel and doing her best to move as quickly and quietly through the underbrush as she can, despite the saddlebag bulging off either side of her.

Whether or not J'onn and her dad would ever see the obvious necessity of her actions is much less certain, and she won't risk them catching onto her plan and trying to stop her.

When she gets to the border, signified by only a trickling stream alight in the moonlight, she forces herself to maintain pace, muscles tense as she crosses—

—and lets out a breath when nothing happens. Nothing's different, nobody jumps out of the trees, she feels no sudden forcefield of alien tech slam down on her.

It's just the same forest she's stood watch over for years, and she lets the familiarity settle her.

She can do this.

She has to.

It's what she'd want Astra to do for her people if the roles were reversed.

\- - -

Finding the panel's location is simple guesswork based on her and Sam's watch-tower at Tall-Tree.

Hooking the collapsible hose up to the well-fed spigot at its base is just a matter of remembering what their own set-up looks like and flipping that map on its mirror.

Blasting away the lower two thirds of the panel with little more than a steady stream of pressurized water is just an hour or so of just standing on the platform at the lowest angle of the panel and accepting the neverending flow of muck rolling down on her as she cleans the worst of the build up.

Realizing she's about thirty feet shy of reaching the furthest third of the panel's face is...where it gets interesting.

She'd packed a water sack just in case the hose or well had proven unusable, but walking ten gallons of water up and down a grated walkway staircase the length of a tennis court get real old, real fast, and just dumping the water down the sloped face without the benefit of needled pressure works about a third as well, if that.

She fills the sack at the bottom platform then climbs back up to the top to slowly pour yet another ten gallons down its face, watching only the barest visual evidence that her efforts are actually doing anything, before repeating the process again.

After the third trip, she's cold and tired and her body is protesting.

After the fifth, she's dying under the weight of the bag, her legs burning with ever step up.

At the tenth, she's gone numb to the feeling of canvas straps digging into her shoulders, each step seeming to tal a thousand years to land, not even her enhanced strength and endurance making up for what she's putting herself through.

When she's done this all at least twenty times and most of the muck is either low enough to reach with the hose from the platform, or it's loosened enough to wash away with the next rainfall.

Hopefully that next rain comes without a mudslide.

And if it does, she's gonna have to find a longer hose.

She sprays the panel one last time robotically, her eyes heavy, her muscles numb, and more than a little of her sanity has fled her.

She doesn't even have the energy to sustain a single emotion at her accomplishment.

She methodically rolls up the hose, gathers her tools and blood-stained water-sack, and packs it all into her saddlebags, preparing to leave.

At this, Alex wavers, blinking down at her bag, nearly invisible in the still-pitch darkness of—no, she has no clue what time it is and she can't even care enough to dig her watch from the easiest pocket to flip open.

She can't carry that. Not now.

It's pathetically weak, the way she drags the bag into a half-dead bush beneath the ladder leading up to the panel's platform, almost not caring if it's sufficiently covered, wondering if the Other Side would assume it had belonged to Cadmus if they did find it.

She stumbles toward the deer path that had led her here.

Maybe it's the deer path. Direction is hard at the moment.

She collapses to her knees. Her mud-drenched nano-suit is so saturated with water, no further wetness registers as she sinks into the silty ground.

Technically her bag did belong to Cadmus, so it's not a lie.

Exhaustion shuts down every synapse still halfheartedly firing in her skull. None of the numerous commands to push herself up and stumble the half-mile back to her own side of the boundary even make it to the processing part of her disengaged brain.

Hell, she also belonged to Cadmus; is she even capable of lying, then? That's how that works, right?

Her palms are splayed in the mud beneath her, then paws in the mud, then the side of her muzzle in the mud, and then precious darkness as her eyes finally close against the throbbing pain of just being alive.

At least she gets to die outside.

There are certainly worse fates than that.

\- - -

Acid lights up her sinuses with pure fire and Alex shoots to consciousness, scrambling to drunken paws, sputtering and coughing, snorting and pawing at her wet, burning nose, snorting some more and pawing, snorting and pawing, stumbling and falling, snorting and pawing.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Alex jumps right out of both of her skins and whips around, only for her hind legs to collapse under a sudden spasm, too weak to hold her weight and she tumbles, swiveling to blink down at her useless legs, her brain struggling to understand how she got here, and landing on  _ you're getting sick again _ more than once in the cycling list of possibilities.

"You're okay, sweet girl. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Alex jumps again at the tender voice and whips up to see a decidedly human-looking girl on her knees beside what had been Alex's muddy nest, hands out to the sides, palms open, a canteen on the ground beside her, not seeming to care that her satchel is resting in a mud puddle at her next to her now-mud-caked jeans.

_ 'Where'd she get jeans,'  _ is the very pertinent thought the comes immediately to Alex's very efficient brain, even though something else thrums beneath the thought, a memory belonging to someone else, or remnants from a dream, or...

She shakes her head, blinking to clear the fog and piece the world back together.

The blonde woman smiles warmly, her eyes crinkling a bit at the corners as her face seems to glow in the oranging morning light. "You hungry, pup?"

Alex blinks and looks around, as if another canine-esque animal will present itself as the pup in question.

But Alex is alone with this northerner in the middle of the forest, and the benchmarks of the forest slowly begin grounding her sluggish brain.

The woman pulls a hunk of dried, spicy-smelling meat from her satchel, strips off a length of it, and holds it out invitingly, like one would for an animal they'd only just met.

Jumbled bits of information begin falling into some semblance of order; sneaking out of the bunker after dinner, crossing the border to northern lands, hours of cleaning the solar panel, functionally comatose, water up her nose, girl. Offering her a piece of jerky.

_ 'She thinks you're an animal _ . _ ' _

Alex grunts and struggles to a sitting position, blearily eyeing the food, then the person offering it to her.

She's pretty sure not even the north would call extrajudicial death-squad for a lone, injured wolf on the northern side of the mountain.

But even still, she's an injured wolf on the wrong side of the mountain, and that's not likely to bode well for her either, especially if the charade falls apart.

Alex sends just one wary glance at the bush just behind the woman, and the very rudimentary cover it offers her saddlebag beneath.

"Come on, sweet pup," the woman plies gently, scooting a scant inch closer. "It's deer. You'll like it."

Alex eyes the meat, concern over her situation momentarily forgotten when the scent of it finally sinks into her nose, nearly as inviting as the woman offering it to her, and her mouth waters.

But she's got enough self-respect not to let herself be hand-fed by some strange girl, no matter how committed to the act she is.

Alex would take this opportunity to just turn walk away, if that wasn't the driving crux of her issue at the moment.

Instead, she settles for just turning her nose away and shuffles back, beginning a subtle survey of their surroundings, senses sharp for any change in the wind that might indicate a trap.

Blonde brows furrow, her disappointment palpable. "No? Or is it—" Her face clears and she holds up one finger before digging through her back again.

Alex stiffens, scooting back further, waiting for the alien weaponry concealed inside that bag.

Or there's the fact that J'onn can read minds, and the possibility that this woman doesn't even need an external weapon at all. What might pretty blondes who give sacriccine nicknames to apex predators be capable of? Can she smell the human in her? Force her to shift? Can she—

"Ah-ha!" The blonde holds a scrap of paper aloft in victory. "No dirt on this fine piece of deer jerky."

She lays the jerky on the makeshift plate and lays it as close to Alex's feet as her position allows before retreating a more comfortable distance away.

"Bon appetit, sweet girl," the blonde says with another warm smile.

Alex eyes her, then the jerky, then the woman, then the jerky, her nerves fried and her brain refusing to properly clear all the cobwebs in her current state.

She reluctantly weighs what she knows about the situation against her empty stomach.

One, no apparent weapon so far, even if that doesn't prove the woman, herself, isn't a weapon.

Two, no way to run without, at the very least, showing her obvious weak-point, so the attempt may disadvantage her if the woman  _ is _ dangerous.

_ 'Or you'd just embarrass yourself in front of the pretty girl by falling ass over tea-kettle. Again.' _

_ Three _ , the longer Alex stays, the more the blonde—if proven genuine—will assume that to mean Alex like her presence, which—again, if genuine—might just prove to delay Alex's next meal longer.

Four, Alex is admittedly starving and, on top of this being about her usual breakfast time, today of all days, she really could use to calories.

Five, it plays into the ploy that she is just an animal and animals are notably food-motivated beings.

And fuck it, right now Alex is an incredibly food-motivated being.

Alex edges forward and takes an experimental sniff, and then, hyper-aware of this woman's attention strictly focused on Alex and her consumption of this proffered food, grabs it gently in her teeth and eats it with as much control and delicacy as she can in this form, even though the moment it hits her tongue, she groans with the tang of sweet spices and savory smoke, marking this as the most delicious piece of jerky she's ever eaten.

But she controls herself.

God forbid she embarrass herself in front of a pretty girl, even if that girl  _ is _ from the other side of the mountain, and even if that girl  _ does  _ think she's an animal; she still has her pride, after all.

When Alex finishes, the woman smiles so beautifully wide, Alex's chest heaves just a little breathless with it.

_ 'Oh, strike pretty; she is beautiful.' _

"You want another?" The blonde shoots her an enticing grin and digs for the rest of the cut of meat, placing it at Alex's feet once more.

It's harder to control the urge to just scarf down this more substantial cut, now that the introduction of food has given her stomach enough energy to protest its own emptiness with demands for more, and quickly.

But she's dealt with worse hungers before, and lays down so she can use a paw to hold it in place while she strips the meat, strand by strand.

"That's a sweet pup," the blonde cooes.

Alex would take a lot of issue with such a sentiment any other day of the week, coming from anyone else's mouth. But right now she's eating, and the woman who gave her that food should be allotted certain forgiveness in this area.

But she's certainly not a sweet pup.

She is a predator. A finely-tuned, military-trained, highly-adept killing machine.

She is  _ not _ a cuddly pet.

Gentle fingers tentatively brush the fur between Alex's ears and Alex stiffens.

And the woman stiffens.

And some kind of questions passes silently between them.

Hesitantly, the gentle touches continue and Alex doesn't dissuade her.

The woman's fingers are careful, but strong, slipping boldly into the longer fur along the back of Alex's neck and scratching deep against tender flesh and overworked muscles.

It's unbecoming to allow a stranger to  _ pet her _ —to let  _ anyone _ pet her. When has she ever let anyone  _ pet _ her?—and it's incredibly reckless to let someone from the other side of the mountain touch her anywhere, any time, for any reason.

Alex grunts softly, leaning into the touch, turning her nose against the woman's inner wrist seeking out a scent that feels—good. Like other-worldly poetry whispering hope into her palm, and a girl Alex had never stopped expecting to come ho—

"Kara!"

The distant call startles them both backwards, knocking them instantly from the moment.

"Shoot," the woman mutters, scrambling to gather her things, looking as shaken as Alex feels. "I'm—I'm sorry, I've got to go." She grabs several discarded items near the foot of the solar panel.

Alex struggles to her feet, forcing her weak legs to push on after the woman—after Kara—no words for this string inexplicably tugging her along.

Well, no, there's a word. She's just afraid to say it.

Kara stuffs a large rolled stack of papers into her back, shooting nervous glances behind her, toward the sky, but drifting back toward Alex one last time, something vibrant in her eyes now. Something changed.

"I don't—my aunt can't see you," she whispers, throwing another glance over her shoulder. "So you have to go. Now, I think. But you—" She clips herself off, anxious as the words fail her, and she shakes her head. "I have to go, but is there somewhere safe we could meet?"

Alex blinks.

_ Is _ there anywhere safe for them?

Kara winces at the silence. "Right, you can't talk. Um..." She looks around, like something just lying on the ground will help. "Rao," Kara very nearly whimpers.

And the sound  _ cuts _ through Alex. Like an old wound ripped open. Like brutal hands that dragged Alex from her bed just shy of seventeen, while a desperate voice begged for her from the other side of a cinder-block wall, only to find herself dropped unceremoniously into a combat area she was told she likely wouldn't survive.

It sounds like losing hope.

Alex shoves to her feet, two legs just as weak as four, but snatches Kara's wrist and drags her beneath the protective shadow of the solar panel.

"Kara!" Astra's voice is closer, clearer, nearly on top of them. "Kara Zor-El, if you actually crossed that border, so help me Rao—"

Alex turns back to Kara's wide open stare and swallows down the several arguments of doubt scrapping at the back of her mind and takes Kara's hands in her.

"Meet me here," Alex whispers, voice scraping and she swallows. "Right here. Beneath the panel."

Kara blinks, fingers trembling in Alex's, but she manages a shaky nod. "When?"

"Tonight," Alex says. Her legs won't like it, but— "And any night you can get away."

Again, Kara nods, her eyes now locked on their woven fingers. "Okay. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yes.  _ So _ yes."

Alex chokes on a laugh and presses her lips to Kara's knuckles. "Okay."

Kara's tears come with her own laugh, face splitting in a beaming smile. "Okay." Her fingers find Alex's cheek, her eyes mapping Alex's face, before tipping their foreheads together. "I have to go, but...this is a beginning, right?"

Alex smiles and slips her right hand into Kara's. "Hi, I'm Alex, and I've  _ missed _ you."

\- - -

**Fin**

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm. Feelin' shaky on this one, lads. Didn't turn out as tight as I'd hoped. Actually really wanna re-write it top to bottom, so that may happen at some point.
> 
> Still hope you liked it! Or like, that this is intriguing enough to make you wanna read more. 
> 
> (It is meant to be the first part of a mini-series, by the way. I just wasn't sure this would actually read cohesively as a chapter-by-chapter story, given that the next part jumps into the thick of their rendezvous.)


End file.
